Circumcision

[fls]

Do you want an honest answer to that question? Or, would you rather have a less predictable answer?

My prediction is that the situation will eventually be given the characteristics of male circumcision, and then will be taken as proof that the objections to male circumcision are reasonable, since objections to female circumcision are reasonable. It won't bother you or anyone else in your camp () that the situation no longer has any connection to the reality of FGM.

Whichever answer you want to give (maybe it'll be both if my prediction is wrong) is fine by me.

Linda

 

[Kaylee]

The issues discussed were outside of their area of expertise. The article was strongly biased. Neither is good for an accurate overview.

Linda

OK, thanks for your response.

Still, after reading this thread and some of the links, I’ve come to the conclusion that I wouldn’t agree to a circumcision for my hypothetical son without doing a lot more research. I’d probably start off by looking up the research quoted in the footnotes for the articles linked to in post #98 and researching the reputation of the ones who performed the studies. If it turned out that they had a reputation for not fudging their numbers and for doing work that could be repeated by others – I’d accept their findings and NOT let my son be circumcised.

This is despite being culturally Jewish and I could expect my hypothetical son to get a lot of flak in the locker rooms while growing up for being intact.

However it’s not a decision that I’m facing so I won’t be spending a good half week in a research library in the near future.

I’ll no doubt be spending the time in the JREF forums instead …

 

[Kaylee]

Of course, some women undergo "circumcision" in order to increase sexual pleasure... what a shock, right?

Are you serious? Link? Don't bother if its in the Onion.

 

[Lonewulf]

Are you serious? Link? Don't bother if its in the Onion.

There was a guy that actually linked a BBSpot article to me before, in a discussion on vegetarianism. He used it to "prove" his argument that vegetables feel the same as animals when injured, so hence it's equivalent to eating meat.

It was... amusing.

 

[Kaylee]

heh

 

[Henners]

Sorry, non-rational is not just another word for arbitrary. You are wrong on that count.

Since I never claimed that, you are incoherent on that count.

In any case, I am not circumcising my children because God told me to. I am circumcising them because we are Jewish and the religious leaders I trust advise circumcision. I have no opinion on whether such behavior does or does not please God - an entity which may or may not exist.

Personally, I cannot understand how anyone can take a knife to a baby and cut it. Whether that is done on the advice of a real old man or an imaginary one is hardly the point.

As to that, you can go [rule10] yourself. I love my children and every action I take is done because I believe it is in their best interests.

Unless you are masking subconscious guilt, here, there's no need to be either personal or nasty. I have not been. I believe that you love your children and you believe that cutting them with a knife is in their best interests, no matter that babies die in your country from that procedure.

I, on the other hand, am Kublai Khan and I demand the respect due to me.

If you honestly believe that I am committing child abuse, I will be happy to supply you with my name and address as well as the number for the local Child Protective Services and you may dial the phone and report me. The only condition is that if your report is determined to be unfounded, you will pay all of my out-of-pocket and legal expenses.

You know that would be a waste of time. People get away with all kinds of hurt to their babies.

Otherwise, STFU.

Is that thing in the capital letters rude?

How brave of you.

 

[JoeEllison]

Are you serious? Link? Don't bother if its in the Onion.

http://www.clitoralunhooding.com/
http://www.femalegenitalrefinement.com/procedures/hoodectomy.php
http://trishwilson.typepad.com/blog/2007/03/female_genital_.html

 

[Southwind17]

I know it's tempting to pull out the dead baby argument, but the point is that there are more dead babies from not having circumcision (from UTI's) than there are from having circumcision. Fortunately, there are very few of both.

Has the apparent link between un-circumcision and fatal UTIs been proven?

 

[Henners]

Has the apparent link between un-circumcision and fatal UTIs been proven?

Is this something that slipped through the evolutionary process?

Or...

Hypothesis: so many men have been genitally mutilated, and for so long a time, that UTIs now preferentially target foreskins.

Frankly, it sounds like a crock.

 

[arthwollipot]

This thread has stopped being interesting.

 

[Southwind17]

Mmm ... Munchhausens by Proxy comes to mind. Yes, I can appreciate the excitement now! Enjoy it while it lasts!

Or, you know, Jewish.

Do you know what - circumcision/Munchhausens/Jewish/excitement - yes, maybe we're starting to uncover a link here!

But thank you for giving me the opportunity to meet someone who believes anyone who disagrees with him must be mentally ill.

YVW, but 'anyone who disagrees'? Tell you what, let's limit this just to you eh, for the sake of argument. Child/pain/disfigurement/infliction/non-consentual/religious leader/exciting - mmm ... mentally ill? Maybe you're onto something here, although 'mentally disfigured' might be a more accurate term! Don't beat yourself up over it though - blame your parents.

I have examined every possible option for gaining consent from my eight day-old son including asking him straight out, performing a little puppet show and strapping on that mind reading device Doc Brown had in Back to the Future. I'm pretty sure he's just going to lie there and ignore me.

'Every possible option'? Come now, you just need to stretch your imagination a little. How about waiting until he's old enough to be sufficiently informed to decide for himself? Oh, but no, that wouldn't do now, would it. He might just see the ludicrousness of it all and decide against it, although that, I suppose, would depend on the degree of 'mental disfigurement' that he might have been forced to endure up to that point.

 

[Ivor the Engineer]

Infants can consent?

Let's put it this way: If all infants weren't circumcised in any way, I don't think any of us would be objecting. If it was always done by consenting mature adults, I think all of us would break off the discussion, get a nice cup of tea, and argue at length about something else.

You have now reached the stage in the conversation about circumcision with Linda et al. where you will address one issue and they will reply about another one. You will then address that issue and they will bring up the first one again. Clearly, they have learned much from their time arguing with woos

It would have been entertaining to have this debate at a time before pain relief was used for infant circumcision. No doubt Linda and many other physicians would have been quoting some scientific sounding nonsense about undeveloped connections to the thalamus, or the lack of myelination of certain nerves, meaning that babies don't feel as much pain as older children, thus it is ok to perform surgery on them without anesthesia.

I also noticed Linda has started whining about how the reality(TM) of FGM is much worse than male circumcision. Obviously this is the case because of those special details that she knows about, but refuses to let the rest of us in on I have a feeling that what she means is FGM is much worse than male circumcision as performed in the West. That is a totally unfair comparison. FGM is practiced in the West by plastic surgeons on consenting adults, safely and with no long term health problems.

Be careful though; if you present her with too many of the facts or logic that contradict her position you will end up being ignored.

 

[Henners]

'Every possible option'? Come now, you just need to stretch your imagination a little. How about waiting until he's old enough to be sufficiently informed to decide for himself? Oh, but no, that wouldn't do now, would it. He might just see the ludicrousness of it all and decide against it, although that, I suppose, would depend on the degree of 'mental disfigurement' that he might have been forced to endure up to that point.

You are forgetting that it is of overriding importance to perform the procedure when the child is too young to lay down a persistent memory of it.

It's an abusers dream world. Abuse the child, and then administer a memory wipe.

 

[Henners]

I also noticed Linda has started whining about how the reality(TM) of FGM is much worse than male circumcision. Obviously this is the case because of those special details that she knows about, but refuses to let the rest of us in on I have a feeling that what she means is FGM is much worse than male circumcision as performed in the West. That is a totally unfair comparison. FGM is practiced in the West by plastic surgeons on consenting adults, safely and with no long term health problems.

Be careful though; if you present her with too many of the facts or logic that contradict her position you will end up being ignored.

Margaret Atwood glosses over the facts too:

http://www.fortunecity.com/victorian/rodin/196/atwood.html

 

[Southwind17]

You are forgetting that it is of overriding importance to perform the procedure when the child is too young to lay down a persistent memory of it.

It's an abusers dream world. Abuse the child, and then administer a memory wipe.

That's right, who'd want to remember such an 'exciting' ritual?!

 

[Darat]

Is there some reason it has to be non-consensual? Or are you not talking hypothetically?

Linda

That was hardly the main point of my post ... However ignore that word if it causes confusion for you.

 

[Ivor the Engineer]

That was hardly the main point of my post ... However ignore that word if it causes confusion for you.

Now come on Darat, surely you know by now that semantics are the friend of the individual who holds an untenable position

 

[Darat]

...snip...

Most of that hasn't actually been quantified either way that I'm aware of. Yes, we know there is sexual and reproductive harm with the more extreme forms of FGC, but what about the milder kinds? What data is really out there on that?

...snip...

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn2837

...snip....

Circumcised women experience sexual arousal and orgasm as frequently as uncircumcised women, according to a study in Nigeria.

The researchers also found no difference in the frequency of intercourse or age of first sexual experience between the two groups of women. These findings remove key arguments used to defend the practice, they say.

Friday Okonofua and colleagues at the Women's Health and Action Research Centre in Benin City studied 1836 women, 45 per cent of whom had been circumcised.

During the operation, all or part of the clitoris and the labia are removed. Proponents of female circumcision claim it makes virginity at marriage and marital fidelity more likely. Opponents condemn it as dangerous and painful.
...snip...

 

[fls]

Where are you getting this definition?

http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/stats_popup9.html

Clitoridectomy is the removal of the prepuce with or without excision of all or part of the clitoris. Excision is the removal of the prepuce and clitoris along with all or part of the labia minora

Thanks. Thinking about this and discussing this is clearing up a few things that didn't quite make sense to me. In particular, I always found the categorization of Type I circumcision a bit odd - why combine removal of the prepuce (marginally acceptable) with removal of the clitoris (definitely unacceptable)? But taking descriptions of the various procedures and that the procedure is called clitoridecotomy into account, I realize it is because in the field the procedure itself doesn't differentiate. Technically it requires care to remove the prepuce separately from the clitoris. Compound that with crude conditions and even tinier anatomy (infants and girls) and the only constant will be removal of the prepuce plus varying amounts of clitoris (sometimes missing the clitoris altogether). Kinda like pulling on the foreskin and swinging a machete to perform a male circumcision (keeping in mind that the person holding the foreskin doesn't want to chop off his fingers).

Then when you move to Type II with its more extensive tissue removal, the constant is removal of some or all of the clitoris plus varying amounts of labial tissue.

So the survey says that more woman had clitoridectomy than clitoridectomy plus excision, for those countries that gave information that was detailed enough to differentiate the two. One can then say that prepuce was removed in those women, but one cannot say the clitoris was or wasn't. There's no reasonable way to make that distinction based on the procedure. Information from other surveys consistently talks about removal of the clitoris, so I'm reluctant to assume that most of the time it is done in such a way as to miss the clitoris all together.

What makes you think that they are splitting type I? It makes more sense that they are sorta splitting type II, since that is the category that includes both clitoridectomy plus excision of the labia and other tissue.

Looking at it again, it looks like they're just splitting it into types 1 and 2.

Yeah, I think you're right.

What tissue is removed, how does it impact sexual and reproduction function, can it be done safely, what are the medical benefits and harms, can consent and refusal be freely given, are the conditions coercive?

Linda

Most of that hasn't actually been quantified either way that I'm aware of. Yes, we know there is sexual and reproductive harm with the more extreme forms of FGC, but what about the milder kinds? What data is really out there on that?
Or is the harm assumed and riding off the research on the more extreme forms?
Same thing with the potential medical benefits.

I wasn't trying to make you answer the questions for me, just indicate what questions would need to be answered before drawing conclusions.

And you're assuming that there's coersion no matter what, so I guess that comes down to opinion.

Well, again I'd be happy to discover otherwise. But I can't assume women are free to refuse consent given the descriptions of the relative positions of men and women in these cultures. And if concern over "getting laughed at in the locker room" is enough to get women in our culture to consider circumcising their son, how can "can never get married or have any functional role in our society" not be considered excessively persuasive to an African woman?

The #1 most common reason given by women is that it's just "what they do". It's tradition and culture.
Then religion.
Then virginity, morality, health, and aesthetics.

From the UNICEF PDF:

Other reasons: A widespread belief among
women who support FGM/C is that the practice
preserves a girl’s virginity, protects her from
becoming promiscuous and prevents her from
engaging in immoral behaviour. In Mauritania 52
per cent of women and in Kenya and Mali 30 per
cent of women believe FGM/C should be continued
because it ensures a girl’s virginity.
Another reason women use to justify their support
for FGM/C is the belief that a girl cannot be
married unless she is circumcised. The belief that
FGM/C is necessary to ensure better marriage
prospects for a daughter is most widespread
among women in Côte d’Ivoire (36 per cent),
Niger (29 per cent) and Eritrea (25 per cent)

Those percentages sound like a lot, but they're actually a minority, compared to the "It's just what you do" reason:

.

Custom and tradition/good tradition: When
asked what they believed to be the main reason
justifying the continuation of FGM/C, the majority
of women cite ‘custom and tradition’ or that it
is a ‘good tradition’ as a reason for their support.
In Côte d’Ivoire, Eritrea and Sudan, for example,
around 70 per cent of women find custom and
tradition to be the most compelling reason justifying
the continuation of the practice.

It makes sense that the "that's the way it's done" excuse is the one most commonly given, since I think that it's the same thing that drives male circumcision in the US. Because I think parents in the US are free to make the choice without risk of economic or social hardship for their child or themselves, changing their opinion is a good way to change the practice. I don't think we can change practice in other countries if we ignore the underlying differences in the consequences of non-compliance for women.

Linda

 

[Ivor the Engineer]

It makes sense that the "that's the way it's done" excuse is the one most commonly given, since I think that it's the same thing that drives male circumcision in the US. Because I think parents in the US are free to make the choice without risk of economic or social hardship for their child or themselves, changing their opinion is a good way to change the practice. I don't think we can change practice in other countries if we ignore the underlying differences in the consequences of non-compliance for women.

What does "change practice" mean? Only do it for medical reasons? Religious/cultural reasons? Do it for any reason so long as it's performed by a professional with pain relief?